What a week! We’ve had the fun experience of training employees on our new espresso machine. Look for it to be installed soon: we’re going old school, back to our roots, to a lever machine. No fancy buttons, just levers and knobs. We have such great camaraderie among our staff that it was a joy to practice on the new machine together. Tonight the other half of the staff will be visiting our garage to play with it: I’m sure that it will be another good time. You can see the pictures on our Facebook page here.

Can you spot Dad and Grandpa watching in the background? Three generations of Fike men.

I enjoyed the evening, but my favorite part was letting Jack try and make a drink after everyone else left. He was standing on tiptoes the whole time, using both hands to pull the lever. I even showed him how to steam milk. Aunt Becky took pictures of the event, and I’ll try to post them to our blog later today. He made a beautiful latte, and he was so proud of himself. We didn’t have any decaffeinated beans, so he only got to try two sips (a wired eight-year-old at 8 pm would be bad!).

This week we have a new Organic Nicaraguan coffee for you. This family owned estate has been in the same family since the president of Nicaragua was deposed in 1979. His lands, which encompassed the entire territory, were divided among the local farmers. Now this El Paraiso estate is run by the children of the original owners, and under the name J and M family they grow an excellent organic coffee.

This Organic Nicaraguan is roasted light so that you can taste all the chocolate-y and nutty flavors of the bean. I may have had too much of this coffee today (is that possible?) since this is one of my favorite flavor profiles. It has a medium body and the flavors linger in your mouth as you sip. I highly recommend this with a chocolate bar for a treat. Mmmm.

I hope that you all enjoy your weekend. The fall colors have been splendid lately. Last night we had a marvelous meal at the New Moon Cafe, sitting outside on the front porch. It was relaxing and calm after the day I spent with first graders at Bishop’s Pumpkin Patch. Not only was the food fresh and seasonal (chanterelle mushrooms!), but the view was of a gigantic maple tree ablaze in red and orange. What a beautiful place we live!

If you’re out looking at the autumnal splendor, stop by and try a free cup of this Nicaraguan on us. Use the code excellent organic*. Organic Nicaraguan would be a great accompaniment to a view-the-colors-drive. However, if you’re more the sit at home type, check out the great fall pictures on the Outside Inn blog. Either way, enjoy good coffee!
–Holly Fike

Many thanks to all of you who wished us well at our staff party. We had a great time. Ruth and Mariah even made tie-dyed t-shirts celebrating our “Spralter-Q,” in an effort to combine all the seasons into one. Trace, on top of being our roaster, is a great cook, and he whipped up steaks, chicken, macaroni salad, soda jerk beans, tomatoes with burrata, and watermelon for all of us. Doesn’t that sound delicious? I think that my favorite were the tomatoes, picked out of the garden just an hour before. You can check out a collage from the party on our blog here.

This week’s coffee comes from Cameroon, where our employee Kathleen spent a year recently. I queried her about her experiences there, and she related her impressions of the country. She said that it was a beautiful landscape, where everything was “green and huge.” The rainy season lasts seven or eight months, from March to November, and the rest of the time it is dry. She described a culture where the pace is “ten times slower than America,” and where “everything is about relationships.” Even going to the market is about who you see, not about what you get, according to Kathleen.

That’s how we feel about our customers, so maybe it is not completely antithetical half a world away. Our business is about the relationships, about all of you who come in and greet us and choose to buy our product. We also love to explore the relationships between where a coffee is grown and processed and how it gets to us. This Cameroon Boyo has a great website where you can see photos of the farmers growing the coffee, here. These are small farms, which are passively organic, by virtue of pesticides not being used in the region.

There is a series of photos that I especially enjoyed, with a man roasting coffee in a pot over an open flame. That’s this gallery, here, if you would like to see it. It’s appropriately titled “SLOW ROASTING.” This Cameroon Boyo coffee came in the artistically decorated burlap* bag pictured to the right. The care that went into the growing of the coffee is evidenced in the detail on the sack.

Now to the crux of the description: what is this coffee like roasted? Ours is not as dark as the one pictured being roasted on the Cameroon Boyo website. Trace roasted this light, and we immediately brewed a pot for all of us to try. Have you noticed how coffee flavors change as it cools? At first sip, this coffee had nutty floral tones and finished with a bright acidity. About three minutes later it was the citrus flavors that were at the forefront as we tasted. As it cooled even further it became more mellow, and we paired it with milk chocolate for the creamy tones that matched so nicely.

If you enjoy African coffees, I’m sure that you will like this Cameroon Boyo. You can have a cup on us by using the code decorated burlap.* Try it at different temperatures, and tell us what you think. You can leave a comment on our Facebook page here: I’d love to hear your description. Have a great weekend!
–Holly Fike

Like this:

Yes indeed, we did have fun at our staff barbeque! Going clockwise from the top left, 1. Mike and Ellen are enjoying chatting with Molly. 2. The girls with their “Spralter-Q” t-shirts (Spralter for spring, summer, fall and winter) that they made. 3. One of the tables of people eating their delicious food. 4. Karen our baker and her husband Tim. 5. Being goofy later in the evening. 6. The second table full of good conversation and good food. 7. In the middle: Kathleen and Jack have fun on the trampoline.

Last night we had an employee chocolate tasting and coffee cupping. Ned and Debi of Cello Chocolate were good enough to come teach us about the process of crafting their chocolate bars, and to let us taste all the varieties they offer. Their chocolates all have the same ingredients, and yet there are dramatic differences between bars. Chocolate has many similarities to coffee, in that you can blend it and add flavors/ingredients to it, or you can let the distinctions of the country of origin shine. Come on in and ask us about our favorites: I think that we all had our own opinion!

Debi from Cello Chocolate with samples to share

This week’s coffee of the week is one that we cupped last night. We tried three totally disparate coffees, as we usually do with an employee cupping, to make it simple to understand. It’s a good way to introduce the concept. When you place a bright African coffee against an earthy, bold Indonesian, the contrast is easy to spot. You get an idea what acidity means, how a full-bodied bean will fill your mouth, what floral or berry notes might be. It is really quite similar to tasting chocolate.

We tried this Celebes Kalossi next to our Natural Ethiopian Sidamo, which we highlighted here. This is the Ethiopian with so much blueberry taste that some people thought we had actually added flavoring to it. The Celebes, on the other hand, was described by employees as “earthy,” “toasty,” “like toffee,” and “mellow.” It is light roasted with medium body.

You can try this Celebes on us this week by mentioning the code in burgundy above: own opinion. It would pair well with the Venezuelan or the Bolivian Cello Chocolate bar. We’ll be posting a few more pictures of our cupping and tasting on our Facebook page, here, if you would like to see more of the fun. In the meantime, enjoy your weekend!
–Holly Fike

For the last five years, the vibrant young lady pictured above has worked for us as a key morning employee. We can now count on one hand the days left until the end of her tenure here, so we’re celebrating Khrista this week. She is known to most of you for her spectacular customer service. She has a smile and a warmth that could charm your socks off, and we’ll sorely miss her around here. Khrista is also our resident party planner, the reason we have a staff summer barbeque, Secret Santa gifts at Christmas, and one year we even all crafted handmade Valentine’s at her behest.

Organic Java Bag

She is moving out of the area to be closer to her family, and especially her new nephew. In honor of her last week, she chose and roasted her own blend, and that is our coffee of the week (she might have had a little help from our roastmaster). This Khrista’s Pick is the original Mocha Java blend.

The Organic Java is a wet-processed bean that arrived with our shipment last week, and although this blend was mixed in roasting, the Java went in first to insure that the two coffees were roasted the same. It has a lot more moisture as a new crop bean than its dry-processed counterpart in this blend.

The second part of Khrista’s Pick is our Yemen Mocha, from the Arabian Peninsula. You can read more about this bean on our blog, here, from when it was last featured last May. On its own this Yemen has a lot of berry tones and a medium body. Together with the full-bodied and smooth Java, you get a balance that neither have solo. Khrista’s Pick is a classic blend, what many believe to be a perfect pairing.

Khrista, we’ll miss your glittery presence around here! For the next week come on in and wish Khrista best of luck as she finishes up her time in Grass Valley. Come try her blend and drink to her success in all future endeavors. You can try a cup on us by printing the coupon below or by mentioning the code in bold above (it’s perfect pairing, like Khrista and smiles). Cheers!
–Holly Fike

Have I mentioned recently that we have the best employees in the world? Well my opinion might be slightly biased, but they’re sure amazing! Last night seven of them voluntarily came after the store closed so that we could reset our racks. I had a goal of removing a middle rack from each set of the gourmet food shelves so that we could surround our gift baskets with the product that is included in each one.

Finishing up Gift Baskets After Hours

It was a larger project than I expected (that’s a lot of product to remove and replace!), but I have such a great team that they kept working without complaining: even those who had already worked a full shift. I am so grateful for each of you who kept a smile on your face even when there were no customers in sight. I truly love my employees! Last week they also came, voluntarily and after hours, and helped me de-clutter our storage area. What a team.

This week we’ve got an entirely new coffee for you: one that we’ve never carried before in our thirty years of being in business. Actually, we tried so many coffees today that I had to pause and remember which one I was writing about. You’ll hear about them all in the next several weeks, but today I started with Monsooned Malabar at home, moved on to the Burundi when I arrived at work, then was treated to a cup of fragrant Jamaican Blue Mountain and finished later with a taste of Aged Sumatra. Whew! I think I better go fill my mug with water to balance all that coffee.

Emptying Product off the Shelves

This week’s coffee of the week is the Burundi. When we first roasted this on Tuesday, I was amazed by the flavor. I was expecting it to be much more acidic, with strong floral and citrus tones, like our Kenya or our Tanzanian Peaberry. Instead it is a very earthy coffee, much more full-bodied than our other African beans, and it even has chocolate-y tones, more often associated with a Central American bean.

I don’t know much about the country of Burundi. Honestly, I had to look it up on Wikipedia to learn that it is one of the world’s most impoverished countries, that it contains the headwaters of the Nile, and that it is surrounded by Rwanda, the Congo, and Tanzania. I do know that this is a wet milled coffee, from the Kayanza Province in the northeast of the country, and that it is a bourbon varietal. One reason that we have not carried a Burundi coffee in the past is that they were sold as mixed lots: it is only recently that specialty coffees have become available from Burundi.

You can try the Burundi this week and enjoy the deep flavors as I did by mentioning the code highlighted above (it’s best employees–go ahead, tell them I said so). Look for other unusual coffees to be offered in the weeks to come: we’ve been sampling some great ones!

It was the annual preschool trick or treat today, and we had a fun time greeting our youngest customers. This is a great, safe, and family-oriented event that draws a crowd every year. We were all dressed up in the store today too, as the pictures below attest. There are more pictures on our Facebook page, if you’d like to see them bigger. Enjoy!

All the morning staff were dressed and ready to keep up with the crowds!

Darling Trick or Treaters–even the pets were dressed up!

These young men were ready for Halloween!

So sweet!

Serious faces from these young ones.

All of downtown is decorated (clockwise from left: City Hall, The Bookseller, and Dorado Chocolates).